Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the top military adviser to the Pentagon and the White House) has made a series of trips to Silicon Valley in northern California to meet with Facebook, Google, Intel and Microsoft, to attempt to persuade the technology companies to help them spy on users.

The Guardian followed this up by revealing an NSA program named Prism that allowed the government to review contents of emails as well as audio and video conversations. A slide from a 41 page presentation made in April 2013, lists Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk and Yahoo and even provided the dates that the companies "joined" the scheme. It also mentions a project called “Upstream” that allows the NSA to collect information from "fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past.”Technology giants immediately denied all knowledge. "We have not joined any program that would give the US government – or any other government – direct access to our servers,” said Google CEO Larry Page. "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. "We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network," said a Yahoo spokesperson.